The purpose of this study was to analyze consumer perceptions of three brands of body wash and how these perceptions affected and were affected by print advertisements for those brands. A battery of statistical tests was performed on a sample of 58 respondents using SPSS, including paired and independent t-tests, regression analysis, discriminant analysis, factor analysis and cluster analysis. The results were considered statistically significant if they could be projected to the population with an 85% level of confidence.
The three brands considered in this study were Axe, Old Spice and Zest. Based on brand index scores, Zest was the most positively perceived brand, followed by Old Spice and Axe.
In general, there did not appear to be a very strong relationship between how the respondent perceived the brand and the impact the ads they viewed had on their purchase intentions.
This study is limited primarily because the data were drawn from a non-random sample, and because the sample was not large. A control group would have made the research design more rigorous but was not possible because of time and resource constraints. Even without a control group, the analysis may also have benefited from having more questions before exposure to the ads for the sake of comparison.
In conclusion, Old Spice and Axe performed similarly in most respects, with Zest slightly ahead. This may be in part due to the fact that respondents where predominately female while Axe and Old Spice primarily target men with their advertising. Many respondents that ranked Axe lower after seeing the print advertisements did so because of the ad’s crude imagery according to the comments section of the survey.